Unconfined
by HolyheadHarpsichord
Summary: Scorpius had always suspected there was something about his past that people weren't telling him. Now, as he begins his seventh year at Hogwarts, he's discovering his fear was even worse than he had predicted. Rated M for future chapters.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter One**

"Scorpius, where the hell are we going?"

With a sharp intake of breath, I rounded a tight corner, weaving my way as fast and unobtrusively as I could through a mob of students who were seemingly flocking to block my path.

"Scorpius!" the boy behind me shouted again, panting heavily. "Slow…the fuck … down…"

Paying no attention to his ignorant commands, I bounded upon the familiar bright red train, taking off down a narrow, carpeted corridor, and sliding open the door to the first compartment I happened to fall into. I grabbed William by his bony arm and dragged him in with me, and within a split-second we were propped up against the closed door, trying to remain as obscure as possible.

I regretted bringing him into this as soon as I heard his hard, jagged breathing that was sure to give us both away.

Making sure to glare pointedly at Will, I pressed my head up against the curtained window and listened. A set of padded footsteps rushed past our hiding place, stampeding down the rest of the corridor and finally diminishing to where we could no longer hear anything but our own hearts beating wildly against their rib cages.

Will poked his unruly mop of hair into a corner of the window, peering down both sides of the hallway.

"All clear," he reassured me, and I finally exhaled freely. He grinned to himself, evidently amused by all of this chaos. "You think she would have killed you?" He asked, crossing his arms and leaning against the wall of the compartment casually.

"I don't think her intelligence would permit her to cast anything beyond a nail-buffing spell," I responded honestly. William chuckled, shaking his wild, brown hair out of his eyes, and apparently deciding he hadn't pestered me enough for one morning.

"You could have at least remembered her name."

"No, I actually couldn't, obviously." His chiding was beginning to get on my nerves. "Besides, she's dim-witted enough. I'll bet you my inheritance she'll have a new love interest by next week."

"Wouldn't want to be throwing that in the air now, would we?" He replied simply.

He had a valid point.

I brushed past him, running a hand nonchalantly through my platinum hair, and stepped out of the small compartment.

"No wonder she wanted to strangle you," Will added unnecessarily from behind me.

"Oh, shut up."

William Rosier was, quite metaphorically, my blood brother. He was probably the first child I had laid eyes on in my own infancy, and throughout most of the experiences our families had required us to endure together, we had become best mates. Neither of us would probably admit to this - we bickered more than a quarrelsome couple consisting of a nagging wife and an opinionated husband – but through all the trials we had undergone, we had really only grown closer to each other.

It was he who followed me out of the train to stand on the platform of the Hogwarts Express, the vessel that would soon carry us to our final year of studies and classes that we would face as young witches and wizards. After this we would be abruptly deposited into the real world, like wild poultry being fired savagely into a pit of hungry lions.

Needless to say, I had been waiting for this moment my entire life.

Freedom was a term that, as I learned that year, was not to be taken lightly. As abstract as the concept may seem, once it is anchored in your reality for even the slightest amount of time, you will soon learn never to take it for granted again. When one is under the impression that they are "free," it changes their entire outlook on life. They are at the liberty to make their own mistakes and suffer the consequences for them, as opposed to hearing someone tell them that their mistakes have consequences. In essence, freedom has the power to liberate, but also to imprison.

If I had taken this nugget of wisdom to heart a little earlier on in the year, maybe things would have ended differently.

Maybe I could have even saved a life or two.

Platform 9 ¾ was the most prominent symbol of freedom I had encountered yet in my life. It not only signified my release from the dull, patronizing evenings I was required to spend with my father at dinner, the cold, stone manner that restrained me and isolated me from the rest of the world, and the torture of listening to my father as he met with his suspicious comrades in our library, knowing that their hushed tones were concealing some of the greatest secrets in the wizarding world, and that I would be executed for overhearing them. It also signified my return to the one place where I wouldn't be quarantined, or forced to sit in my room and read a book about newly evoked Ministry laws. There would actually be people my own age to talk to. Swarming around me like flies, greeting me everywhere I went, filling in the dull patches in conversations with their incessant noise and ensuring that I was never alone…

"Will," I said tensely, spotting another unwelcomingly familiar female face in the crowd. "Is that another one?"

"How am I supposed to know? You're the one who – "

 _BAM._

Before I could register what had just slammed into me, a trunk had spilled onto the ground, and its contents were rolling across the filthy floor of the station, entirely at the mercy of the witches and wizards trampling them underfoot. A tall, unfamiliar boy had leapt to the ground after them, offering useless apologies as he tried to collect rolling inkwells, potions flasks and scrolls of parchment, shoving them unceremoniously back into his trunk. I pulled myself up from the floor and wiped the soot off the front of my expensive slacks, only to notice that a crowd had formed around us, and judging by the shocked expressions of the onlookers, (most of whom happened to be first years,) they were expecting some sort of furious reaction out of me.

I looked around me, realizing that I was not half as infuriated as I expected myself to be. Perhaps my curiosity was outweighing my desire to wring the responsible man's neck at the moment. His possessions were strewn about the ground like ashes, some of them lying dangerously near the tracks to the Hogwarts Express. Much to the dismay of some of the younger students, I bent down to help him retrieve them. In fact, the crowd dispersed entirely when they understood that I was neither going to hex this boy, nor verbally abuse him publicly. He obviously didn't think I was going to do so either, which led me to believe that he wasn't at all familiar with the social customs of our school.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled under his breath, picking up a stack of photographs and piling them into his school trunk, almost nervously. I hardly ever accepted apologies from complete strangers, but this particular dimwit struck me as a rather intriguing individual. It was almost as though he didn't belong at a school with people like us.

"Forget it," I responded offhandedly, picking up a stack of photographs myself. I turned my head sideways to glance at the moving picture curiously.

At first I couldn't identify what exactly the photographer's target had been; it was a picture of the Great Hall during a mealtime, and a group of Slytherins were crowded around the long table strewn with various items of food.

And then I spotted my blonde head in the center of the photograph. I was sitting there, reading a sheet of paper with a look of intense curiosity on my face. Will was next to me, and my friend Josephine on my other side.

I flipped through the rest of the pictures piled haphazardly in the stack, and to my horror, found that I was the subject of these photographs as well. Pictures of me walking through the corridors, riding my broomstick, studying alone at the library, taking exams… _Christ_ , how were those photographs even captured without my knowledge?

"Who the hell are you?" I demanded in an entirely different tone, rising to my feet and taxing him up and down, wondering what this boy was trying to pull. Was this a joke? Some sort of sick plan to humiliate me on the first day back?

"No one of your concern," He answered, standing up to face me. I could look at his dark face now, the firm jawline, high cheekbones and chocolate brown eyes that still were obscure in my memory. I had never seen him before in my life.

"Yeah, well it just became my concern." I threw down the stack of photographs harshly on the ground, reaching for my wand which was securely tucked away in my pocket.

So much for not giving the first years a performance.

"What are you playing at?" And when he didn't speak, I raised my voice. "Answer me!"

"Scorpius, I never meant for you to – "

"How the _fuck_ do you know my name?"

"Just listen to me…" He took a step closer to me, his eyes gleaming with what appeared to be trepidation.

Before he had a chance to explain himself, however, a short girl with a long, black ponytail and medium-colored skin threw herself between us.

"Scorp, what are you doing?" she asked, looking nervously between me and the boy. She glanced down at the wand that was clenched in my fist, aimed at the boy who had just caused my stomach to wrench over backwards, and was making me feel more and more uneasy by the minute.

I was forced to take my eyes off him when she announced loudly that we were all getting on the train, and that the Slytherins were waiting in our usual compartment for me. She thrust a piece of parchment into my hands with a list of all the prefects the year on it, and then strode towards the train, expecting me to follow in her wake. However, when I looked back to see the boy who had been standing next to us a moment ago, he was gone.

"Jo, I need to talk to you," I spoke to the girl who was leading me down the narrow train corridor, which was now abuzz with activity.

"Can it wait? We have prefect duty, and as you'll recall, you're really in no position to be flouting responsibility this early on in the semester…" She was referring, of course, to that embarrassing encounter at the end of last year where I was caught screwing a girl in an empty classroom during the closing ceremonies by none other than Professor McGonnagall. Who just happens to be our Headmistress.

"It's about that boy on the platform, actually," I persisted, anxious to drop the subject I knew she would want to bring up sooner or later. "He… Oh, come here." I pulled her into an empty compartment and shut the sliding door behind us, just as I had with Will only minutes before.

"What?" She looked irritable, and I remembered how much I missed seeing Josephine Zabini angry with me over the summer. I recalled her twin brother Sabian giving me that exact same look before we parted last spring on more than indifferent terms.

I fixed my eyes on hers, straining my mind to come up with a reasonable explanation for all of this.

"He had… a stack full of pictures in his trunk… They were from all around Hogwarts, but…" I looked over my shoulder at the window, confirming that there were no meddlesome students sticking their noses into our conversation… "They were all of me. In potions class, in the common room, even playing Quidditch…"

Her face wrinkled in confusion; apparently this sounded just as odd to her as it did to me.

"Anyway," I continued, still staring into her puzzled, light hazel eyes. "It's even scarier because I've never seen this twat before in my life, and he's apparently been keeping tabs on me for the last 3 years."

"I didn't recognize him either." She narrowed her eyes, as if trying to recall a memory. "And you'd think we would have known if he went to Hogwarts with us. We don't exactly get new students every day."

"Why would he even go to the trouble? Seems like a lot of work, making sure to keep himself out of sight while he caught me off guard with his camera…"

"Maybe he just wanted to shag you," she said with an arched eyebrow, bringing back unwanted memories of something Sabian had said to me last year.

"See, this is why I confide in you, Jo. You always make me feel so much better…" She laughed at me and looked me straight in the eyes, tucking a piece of long, white-blond hair behind my ear.

"Free moral support is hard to pass up these days."

"Which is the only reason we're friends. The second you start charging, you can just say good-bye to that new broomstick my dad bought you for Christmas."

My mind was still reeling with the images I had just seen moments ago in the boy's trunk. Was it just my imagination? Had I hallucinated this entire ordeal for a lack of anything exciting happening in my life all summer? Or was there something this stranger was hiding from me that I needed to find out about?

"Come on," I said to Jo, sliding open the door to the compartment and stepping outside "Let's go find your brother."


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Josephine and Sabian Zabini took the meaning of "polar opposites" to an entirely different level. Despite the fact that they both had dark skin, raven hair and greenish-hazel eyes complemented by heavily-set brows, (and the fact that they shared the same date of birth,) they could not be more dissimilar.

Sabian was known for his skill in Potions and Arithmancy, while Josephine excelled in Charms, Transfiguration, and Defense against the Dark Arts. She was outspoken and athletic, while her brother usually preferred to keep to himself and his small circle of friends. She was confident, and he was handsome. Jo had once confessed to me that I was the only person who had known both of them long enough to look past their primary likenesses in appearance and see them as two, separate individuals. I couldn't believe that anyone had considered Josephine and her brother to bear any other kind of resemblances, let alone assume that they belonged to the same species.

As Jo and I walked down the corridor together to reach compartment number 115, I realized that I really had no desire to speak with her brother or even to see him again after the long, summer break distancing us from the row we had had at the end of last semester. I had half hopes that he wouldn't return to school at all, and would simply begin his career, putting his embarrassing past at Hogwarts behind him.  
Only, he was Sabian Zabini. And what would embarrass most people under normal circumstances didn't seem to faze him in the slightest.

Damn those senseless, noble, pure-blooded prigs.

I remembered every detail of the scene like it had just taken place this morning. We had been walking to Potions together, winding our way down the cold, spiral staircase that led to the dungeons, when he suddenly announced that he needed to talk to me for a moment. Privately.

He pulled me behind a tapestry into a hidden stairwell, and with an odd, unfamiliar look on his face, he told me he had a confession to make. He lowered his voice, checking to make sure that we were alone, and then he told me what I had been fearing he'd say ever since our third year at Hogwarts: That he thought he was in love with me. That he loved the way I talked to him, the distinct smell I carried which he claimed was a mixture of expensive cologne and mint leaves, and the way my hair fell into my face, emphasizing the metallic gray of my dramatic eyes…

I told him he was full of shit, and then threatened to curse him into oblivion if he ever approached me again.

I had kept my promise for most of that year too, until one night when we were both drunk in the common room in the early hours of the morning, and I decided it would be amusing to toy with his emotions, luring him into some false hope that I might actually be capable of returning the sentiments he felt towards me. It was all in good fun, just some languid, wet kisses and empty words shared over countless bottles of Firewhiskey…

And then he found out it was all a joke. Well, he found out when he walked in on me screwing a Slytherin witch in our bedroom directly after that little incident. Needless to say, he didn't forgive me very easily for that one. And I didn't care. I yelled all kinds of horrible things at him, saying that he had only been my best friend for the last 6 years because he wanted to fuck me, and finally we just parted ways, vowing never to speak to each other again.

I don't know if he ever filled his sister in on every detail of that story, but she was well-informed of the fact that he wasn't straight. We had all known it for about 3 years now; I just never dreamed that he would go after me.

Stopping briefly in the compartment with the rest of my Slytherin companions to ensure that our belongings were safely tucked away, Jo and I took two seats opposite William, his shaggy, bedraggled hair looking just as it had earlier this morning, and his skeletal limbs sticking out at odd angles, leading one to believe he hadn't been adequately-fed in months; Malcolm , a menacing boy with large muscles and altogether too much chest hair; and Sabian himself, who seemed to be conveniently avoiding eye contact with me.

"So," Jo began, sensing the tension between her brother and myself immediately, and doing her best to alleviate it. "You _have_ practiced Quidditch this summer, haven't you, Scorpius?"

 _Of course_. I had forgotten that she was newly elected the Captain of the Slytherin Quidditch team, and she would go to whatever measures necessary to ensure that we never lost another game in our careers.

"Sure, a few times," I lied to her, shrugging off the guilt she was trying to push onto my shoulders. It wasn't as if I didn't _want_ to practice, after all. I wasn't bad at it or anything – I think the only person at the school with more natural-born Quidditch talent than me is Albus Potter – I was only held back by my father, who, like every summer preceding this, kept me under lock-and-key, refusing to let me out of the house. He had done this every year since my mother had left us when I was eleven, and though I had snuck out countless times at night to seek refuge in a nearby muggle village, I wasn't able to find a place secluded enough to fly my broomstick around while escaping his notice.

Jo was looking at me like I had just snapped her wand in half.

"He'll do fine!" Will reassured her, rolling his eyes and lounging back into his seat. "He never practiced last year either."

"And that, Scorpius Malfoy, is your problem," she pronounced, rounding off on me. "Don't think you're getting off that easy this year; were going to have a minimum of ten practices a week. Got it?"

"Is there any way to sack myself now?"

"No, because there's no way were giving up the house cup to that idiot Potter and the Gryffindors again. I'll die before I see us lose to them one more time."

There were murmurs of agreement from around the car, even from Malcolm Schaddler, who had neither played nor watched a game of Quidditch in his life.

"Yeah, why did they beat us last year?" Sabian asked, speaking for the first time in my presence. Anyone else might have interpreted this as a curious inquiry; he had said it so conversationally that they had no reason to believe otherwise. But I glanced past his smokescreen, knowing that he had meant it as a subtle attack on my character. He was contradicting the fact that I had shown any skill on the Quidditch pitch at all to begin with.

You see, you sort of had to be there for the final Quidditch game at the end of last semester. That was the one that the two leading houses contended in, and the winner of the game earned their team a House Cup as a disbursement for their efforts. We should have won last year. However, several complicated factors all stacked on top of each other ensured that we didn't. And part of that was my fault.

I brought my eyes up to meet his, seeing nothing but the guise of false interest standing between us. He had definitely become an expert at hiding from the others that he felt anything towards me but a brotherly attraction that had been in place ever since he had first met me.

Before I could clobber him sufficiently, however, the train lurched forward and began chugging steadily, picking up speed as it left Platform 9 ¾, the mothers and siblings at the station waving at us, wishing us farewell as they faded into the exhaust fumes emitted by the departing train.

Jo gave me a look that clearly communicated "Just give it up, Scorpius," and for her sake, I did. Besides, it would look odd to the rest of the people in the car if I pulled out my wand and hexed her brother's face off for no apparent reason.

An odd, inexplicable silence followed this, and all five of us did nothing but relax in our seats a little, and gaze out the window at the passing scenery: the buildings and crowded streets surrounding the station transitioning into rolling hills and long, winding streams weaving about the countryside in snake-like knots…

And then out of nowhere, the compartment door slid open and a student interrupted our peaceful excursion. My nose automatically wrinkled in revulsion.

"The prefects are meeting in compartment 12, and we've already started without you."

I didn't reward the annoying, red-headed witch in the doorway with so much as a glance in her direction, though I knew that she was obviously speaking to Josephine and me. We were the only prefects sitting within the vicinity of the compartment. I almost groaned aloud when I remembered that she had been awarded the position of Head Girl at the end of spring term. This meant that, in addition to being an insufferably irritating presence in my life, she could now upgrade her haughty, entitled temperament to another level, and rub it in my face that her marks were better than mine.

"You two are prefects, correct?" She said, motioning to me and Jo as though we might not have heard her the first time.

"No, Weasley," I drawled back sarcastically. "We just demoted ourselves to Hogwarts janitors,"

She scoffed in my direction, her eyes hitting the ceiling of the compartment.

"Well I'm glad you've made some use of your broom now that we've all seen what a brilliant seeker you are," she spat back quickly, delivering an unexpected blow to my pride. Nobody said anything. Will squirmed a little in his seat across from me, and Sabian looked away from us as though trying to suppress a hearty laugh.

My fists clenched automatically.

"I'd rather lose one, _bloody_ Quidditch match than have to wake up every morning and look in the mirror to see _that_ staring back at me." I gestured to her still unaffected expression, and was surprised to see that she again took no personal offense to my statement.

"Funny, Malfoy, how you're so convinced everyone cares what you think of them."

"Funny how, despite what everyone has been telling you since you were born, you still haven't adapted a sense of personal hygiene."

"It's funny how you think you so on top of things, but there's a meeting going on right now in Compartment 12, and you're not in it."

"Yes, but neither are you, you dimwitted banshee."

"Oh, that's really mature, Malfoy…"

Jo surprised me by standing up quickly, her head nearly hitting the luggage rack of our compartment. She granted me with an intense glare, narrowing her eyes and gritting through her teeth, "Scorp, just _leave_ it."

I raised my eyebrows at the tyrant in the doorway, as if daring her to continue our argument. She merely turned on her heel and, with a fleeting glance at Jo, stalked down the corridor to rejoin her perfect little prefect meeting.

Good riddance.

What surprised me even more was when the silence after her departure was shattered by a loud wolf-whistle.

"What the _fuck_ , Will?" Jo demanded, looking more irritable than usual.

"What, you don't think she's sexy?" He asked her, and she promptly threw a Quidditch catalogue laying on her seat into his face.

"What are you even talking about?" I groaned, wondering if my best mate was going to be any fun to hang around with this year. "She's a troll. A half-blooded, red-headed, scum-sucking excuse for a human being. Personally I don't see what you could possibly find sexually appealing about that."

"She's the hottest troll I've ever seen." He was staring in the doorway like she was still standing there, like he was still ogling her body from head to toe. "I'm serious. She wasn't this good-looking last year. Something happened."

"Breast implants?" Jo suggested bitterly, folding her arms and looking out the window.

Will shrugged, as though he were seriously considering this possibility.

"Oh, come on, Will," I sighed again, getting up from my seat and pulling my jacket off. "You're being stupid. She's a Weasley; by definition, you can't go out with her. It's unethical."

"Since when do you give a shit about ethics, Scorp?"

I supposed he had a point. When it came to sexual relationships, I really didn't give a shit. I had never cared before what kinds of girls I slept with, or even what kind of blood background they were from. There was just something… incredibly screwed up in my best mate finding that… _thing_ attractive. It was like imagining professor McGonagall in skimpy clothing, or any of the Potters without superiority complexes. It just wasn't right.

"Are you ready, or no?" Jo said, clearly agitated. Something had definitely struck a nerve with her at some point in the conversation.

"Probably not," I replied, glancing up and down the hallway. I really was in no mood to sit in a stuffy compartment and be lectured by a mudblooded shrew my best mate found attractive. "Those meetings are all the same anyways. How about we go find a drink?"

Jo seemed to perk up a little at that. "Yeah, alright," she responded, putting down the set of robes she was about to change into. "I could go for that."

"Only if you stop giving me shit about Quidditch."

"No guarantees."


End file.
